A secret air war is being waged in Iraq -
often in and around that country's population
centers - about which we can find out little. The
US military keeps information on the munitions
expended in its air efforts under tight wraps,
refusing to offer details on the scale of use and
so minimizing the importance of air power in Iraq.
But expert opinion holds that the forms of aerial
assault being employed in that country, though
hardly covered in the US media, may account for
most of the Iraqi civilian deaths attributed

to
the US-led coalition since the 2003 invasion.

While some aspects of the air war remain a
total mystery, US Air Force (USAF) officials do
acknowledge that US military and coalition
aircraft dropped at least 50,000 kilograms of
bombs on targets in Iraq in 2006. This figure, 177
bombs in all, does not include guided missiles and
unguided rockets fired, or cannon rounds expended;
nor, according to a US Central Command Air Forces
(CENTAF) spokesman, does it take into account the
munitions used by some Marine Corps and other
coalition aircraft or any of the US Army's
helicopter gunships. Moreover, it does not include
munitions used by the armed helicopters of the
many private security contractors flying their own
missions in Iraq.

Air war, Iraq: 2006
In statistics provided to Tomdispatch,
CENTAF reported a total of 10,519
"close-air-support missions" in Iraq in 2006,
during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and
fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles". These air
strikes presumably included numerous highly
publicized missions ranging from the January 2006
air strike outside the town of Baiji that
reportedly "killed a family of 12", including at
least three women and three young children, to the
December attack on an insurgent safe house in the
Garma area, near Fallujah, that reportedly killed
"two women and a child" in addition to five
guerrillas.

Then there were the even less
well-remembered events, such as those on July 28
when, according to official reports, a USAF
Predator unmanned aerial vehicle destroyed an
"anti-Iraqi forces" vehicle with Hellfire
missiles, while USAF F-16 Fighting Falcons
"expended a GBU-12, destroying an anti-Iraqi
forces location", both in the vicinity of the city
of Ramadi.

The latter weapon, Guided Bomb
Unit-12, a laser-guided bomb with a 500-pound
(227kg) general-purpose warhead, was the most
frequently used bomb in Iraq in 2006, according
CENTAF statistics provided to Tomdispatch. In
addition to the 95 GBU-12s "expended", 67
satellite-guided, 500-pound GBU-38s and 15
2,000-pound (907kg) GBU-31/32 munitions were also
dropped on Iraqi targets last year, according to
official USAF figures.

One weapon
conspicuously left out of this total is rockets -
such as the 2.75-inch Hydra-70 rocket that can be
outfitted with various warheads and is fired from
fixed-wing aircraft and most helicopters. The
number of rockets fired is withheld from the press
so as, according to a CENTAF spokesman, not to
"skew the tally and present an inaccurate picture
of the air campaign".

The number of
rockets fired may be quite significant as,
according to a 2005 press release issued by
Democratic US Senator Patrick Leahy, who helped
secure a US$900 million Hydra contract from the US
Army for General Dynamics, "the widely used
Hydra-70 rocket ... has seen extensive use in
Afghanistan and Iraq ... [and] has become the
world's most widely used helicopter-launched
weapon system". Early last year, Sandra I Erwin of
National Defense magazine noted that the US
military was looking to the Hydra to serve as a
low-cost weapon for Iraq's urban areas. "The army
already buys and stockpiles thousands of the
2.75-inch Hydra rockets, and is seeking to equip
as many as 73,000 with the laser kits, under a
program called 'advanced precision kill weapon
system', or APKWS. The navy would purchase 8,000
for Marine Corps helicopters," she wrote.

The number of cannon rounds fired - some
models of the AC-130 gunship, for instance, have a
Gatling gun that can fire up to 1,800 rounds in a
single minute - is also a closely guarded secret.
The official reason given is that "Special Forces
often use aircraft such as the AC-130" and since
"their missions and operations are classified, so
therefore these figures are not released".

Repeated inquiries concerning another
reporter's statistics on cannon rounds fired by
CENTAF aircraft prompted the same official to
state emphatically in an e-mail: "WE DO NOT REPORT
CANNON ROUNDS." His superior officer,
Lieutenant-Colonel Johnn Kennedy, the deputy
director of CENTAF public affairs, followed up,
noting:

Glad to see you appreciate the
tremendous efforts [my subordinate] has already
expended on you. Trust me, it's probably much
more significant than the relentless pursuit of
the number of cannon rounds.

But the
number of cannon rounds and rockets fired by US
aircraft is not an insignificant matter, according
to Les Roberts, formerly an epidemiologist for the
World Health Organization in Rwanda during that
country's civil war and an expert on the human
costs of the war in Iraq. According to Roberts,
who was last in Iraq in 2004 (where, he says, he
personally witnessed "the shredding of entire
blocks" in Baghdad's Sadr City by aerial cannon
fire), "rocket and cannon fire could account for
most coalition-attributed civilian deaths". He
added, "I find it disturbing that they will not
release this [figure], but even more disturbing
that they have not released such information to
congressmen who have requested it."

Non-CENTAF military officials were equally
tight-lipped about such munitions - at least with
me. A public affairs officer from US Central
Command told me that the command didn't track such
information. When I questioned a coalition
spokesman in Baghdad about the number of rockets
and cannon rounds fired by US Army and Marine
Corps helicopters in Iraq in 2006, I was told, "We
cannot comment on your inquiry due to operational
security."

I then pointed out that just
last month, in National Defense magazine, Colonel
Robert A Fitzgerald, the Marine Corps's head of
aviation plans and policy, was quoted as saying
that in 2006, "marine rotary-wing aircraft flew
more than 60,000 combat flight hours, and
fixed-wing platforms completed 31,000. They
dropped 80 tons of bombs and fired 80 missiles,
3,532 rockets and more than 2 million rounds of
smaller ammunition."

When asked whether
this admission had endangered operational
security, the spokesman responded, "I cannot
comment on the policies or release authority of a
marine colonel."

While the Marine Corps's
statistics presumably include totals of munitions
used in Afghanistan, where US air power has played
a